Month: May 2018

Preparing and loading 80lb rails for tangent 14-15 used up most of the morning.

Rolf, deep in the zone, drilling bolt holes.

Malcolm in action docking old welds from the rail ends.

The team is well practised in preparing rails, having prepared over 10 linear km of rail in this manner so far.

The afternoon was quite varied, replacing a few sleepers around Muckleford yard, cross boreing / re-gaugeing a section of the curve on the UP side of Muckleford and installing some tie rods in two curves towards Castlemaine that are being to show signs of loose fastenings.

These works are just part of the maintenance required to keep our railway operating safely.

Well be out preparing for tangent 14 – 15 tomorrow, with the weather forecast for the same as today, it’ll be another perfect day in paradise.

We’ve been back at Newport again this week, more turnout timbers and lots of sleepers.

We had a bit of a nice surprise today with not one but two steam locos being lit up!

We’re even holding out hopes we might be big movie stars! You can just make out a camera man at left and behind the gang were many more!

Not entirely sure why so many film crews thought our civil gang was news quality but we’re pretty chuffed! (we think maybe they were there to film the engines along with some sort of press release – we’ll have to watch the news to find out)

Re-sleepering inside the loco servicing area was interesting, you can see how much material had to be moved to remove the old sleepers and install the new.

The afternoon was spent dodging trains and cleaning up the old sleeper material, kept the gang very busy!

We’re back for one last day tomorrow, to tidy up loose ends and install the last few sleepers, if you’re around and looking for some excitement please join us!!

Today we put in the rest of the sleepers, again a mix of steel and timber.

You can pick the new timbers by their red colour. The short straight above was one of our roughest sections of track, however after an hour of jacking and tamping it now rides very smoothly.

Unfortunately there is a number of ‘crippled’ joints, the rails are bent vertically near the joint, which prevents us getting the track dead flat, but it’s much better… Only all the way to Castlemaine to tamp up now!

Among the VGR’s trackwork skills is helping out other organisations with their trackwork.

In the week just gone we assisted Steamrail with some trackwork at their home in the old West Block of the Newport Railway Workshops.

The work largely involved replacing life expired turnout timbers and correcting areas of wide gauge in the plain track.

We mustered our usual kit of trucks, excavator and tools to tackle the job, with the job 90% complete, only not completed due to appallingly weather on the last day.

The works, although for Steamrail, did also include some trackwork for 707 operations and DERMPAV (other groups based at the workshop), which should now see them able to use the yard for several more years without hassle.

Below is a collection of pics from the week:

The team gauging and spiking a turnout after new timbers were installed.

The usual morning tea and lunch rituals are still followed even when working away!

There was generally only a few timbers required in each turnout, however the state of the timbers removed is clear by seeing how easily Malcolm was able to carry them around!

The trusty fleet.

Overall the works went very well, however due to weather we will we back to finish off an urgent job this coming Tuesday and then again in a fortnight’s time.

If you’re a Melbourne resident and would like to come and check out how we do things please feel free to come along, as always the more hands the easier the job.

Unfortunately there were are no completed pics as it seemed the rain was about to start (still hasn’t arrived!) and we made a dash for home, but tomorrow we will have the job completed and lots of pics to show off our hard work.

A lot of mid week preparation occurred to help with this achievement, bolting 2 out of 3 rails together, material distribution and steel sleeper inbolting, however it has really paid off!

We’ve even tamped all the sleepers to make tomorrow’s drilling job easier and quicker.

We’ll be out on site from around 8.30 tomorrow, so please join us as there’s still lots to do and the more hands the easier the job.

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VGR Civil Team

The Victorian Goldfields Railway’s Civil team maintain the railway’s permanent way and associated infrastructure.

We’re a team of volunteers of around 20 people and one full time Ganger.

A team of us head out every Thursday and Friday, working on anything from re-sleepering to re-railing to operating works trains to repairing trestle bridges!

If you’d like to try your hand at trackwork and and would like to help in maintaining a working railway we would love to have you out on the team – we’re always looking for more help and there is always something, any day of the week – no previous experience or skills required!

Please contact us at: The Contact Page if would like to become involved.